MONROE, Michigan — Vice President JD Vance brought the fire to the Wolverine State on Thursday, campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers and taking direct aim at his opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, in a speech that left no doubt about what is at stake in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
Vance, speaking to a crowd in Monroe, called the Michigan Senate contest "the most important race in the United States of America," according to The New York Times, and framed El-Sayed as a far-left candidate whose record and rhetoric place him well outside the mainstream of a commonsense Midwestern state.
"He calls our nation irredeemably racist. He calls the United States of America genocidal, and he hates the people who built it, people like my grandfather, who was for 40 years a union welder at the Middletown Works of Armco Steel in Ohio," Vance said, according to Breitbart. "Abdul says that men like this, men like you, men like your father and grandfather and your son, were bigots."
The vice president did not stop at El-Sayed's broadsides against the country. He zeroed in on the Democrat's personal attack on his late grandfather, James Hamel.
In a post on X in August, El-Sayed suggested that Vance would not have brought second lady Usha Vance back in time to meet his grandfather if given the opportunity. Vance recounted the comment from the stage.
"He said my papaw, one of the greatest men that I have ever known, the man who raised me when my own mom and dad struggled … was incapable of loving my darling wife and our amazing second lady for the simple fact that he was white and she is not," Vance said. "Abdul said this despite being raised in part by his own white step-grandfathers, and I can only imagine if he says that in public what he says about you when the cameras aren't on."
Vance also accused El-Sayed of fabricating his own biography, telling the crowd that the Democrat has presented himself as an outsider rather than as a Michigan native.
"He invented a totally fictitious background for himself, not as a Michigander born an hour north of where we stand today, but as a foreigner who came here from 6,000 miles away," Vance said. "What does it say about your love of your community when you literally lie? You are so ashamed of this place that you lie about where you came from."
The vice president also hammered El-Sayed over his response to the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Authorities identified Ayman Mohammad Ghazali as the attacker who died at the scene, and believe it was a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack. According to Breitbart, Vance said El-Sayed chose to attack the victims rather than lead.
"In a moment where he should show leadership, he decided to attack the people who were victimized by that crime."
The crowd's reaction added its own punctuation to the evening. According to Mediaite, when Vance lit into El-Sayed, someone in the crowd yelled "Lock him up!" — a sentiment echoed by at least one other attendee. Vance pointed in their direction.
"Sir, you can say that but I can't," the vice president replied, as several people in the crowd attempted a chant that ultimately fell flat.
Vance broadened his argument beyond the individual matchup, casting El-Sayed as a test case for how far the modern Democratic Party is willing to go.
"This is not my papaw's Democratic party. This is not the party of JFK. Not the party of Franklin Roosevelt. Not even the party of Bill Clinton," Vance said, per Mediaite. "These people are looking ahead to the future, and they're plotting. 'How do we seize complete control of one of America's great political parties?' They are testing with candidates like Abdul El-Sayed. They are testing just how extreme, just how far they can go in a nice, commonsense midwestern state like this one."
Vance, an Ohio native, leaned into the regional ties between his home state and Michigan.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I know you. I know this state. And for all the ribbing I give you as an Ohio guy, the fundamental reality is we are cut from the same cloth," he said.
The visit comes as Rogers, a former congressman, trails El-Sayed 45% to 48.1%, according to Mediaite. Vance has been crisscrossing the country in recent weeks campaigning for vulnerable Republicans, and his stop in Monroe signals that the White House views Michigan's Senate seat as a must-win — and views El-Sayed as beatable.
For Michigan voters, the choice now framed by the vice president himself is a stark one: a former congressman with deep ties to the state, or a Democrat whose own words about the country and its people are now central to the closing argument against him.
Our Take
This is what a closing argument looks like. JD Vance didn't fly to Michigan to talk about polling or process — he went there to draw a line, and he drew it through Abdul El-Sayed's own words.
Think about what El-Sayed actually said. He called America "irredeemably racist." He called the country "genocidal." He attacked a union welder — a man who spent four decades at Armco Steel — as a bigot, and he went after Vance's grandfather by name on social media. And when a Hezbollah-inspired attacker targeted a Jewish temple in his own state, El-Sayed's instinct wasn't to stand with the victims. It was to attack them.
That is not a moderate. That is not a commonsense Midwesterner. That is exactly what the Left's testing lab produces when it thinks nobody is watching. Vance said it plainly: they are testing how extreme, how far they can go, in a nice, commonsense Midwestern state.
And notice the crowd. When patriots in Monroe yelled "Lock him up," it wasn't a slogan handed down from a consultant — it was the raw reaction of Americans who have watched the Left smear their country, their families, and their faith, and who are done pretending it's normal.
The polling says Rogers trails by roughly three points. The vice president of the United States just bet his time that those three points are gettable — because Michigan voters, when they see Abdul El-Sayed for what he actually is, will reject him.
Fellow patriots, this is the fight. Michigan's Senate seat is one of the last firewalls between the America First agenda and the radical Left's next experiment. Rogers is the man to hold it. November is coming. What are you going to do about it?
